ALEC (All Legislation Enhancing Corporations) asked the legislators it appoints as state directors to raise their right wings and swear: “I will act with care and loyalty and put the interests of the organization first.”

ALEC first. Before the lawmaker’s constituents. Before the interests of the lawmaker’s state. Before the constitution of the United States. ALEC asked its lawmakers to forsake their oaths of office and swear fidelity instead to the organization that wines, dines, indulges and indoctrinates them with buckets full of corporate cash. The ALEC loyalty oath clarifies the allegiance of the 1,810 state legislators that ALEC claims as members. They see their primary duty as serving corporations, specifically the corporations that give millions to ALEC.

This process effectively eliminates those pesky voters from lawmaking. ALEC is the middle man bringing corporations and lawmakers together, facilitating a process in which corporations craft legislation for themselves, then lawmakers, all fat and happy on the corporate dime, take that legislation home and get it passed. No citizen input needed, thank you.

Shoot first laws are great for gun manufacturers, assuring no liability for hotheads who rashly use their products. Florida’s shoot first law wasn’t so great for Trayvon Martin. And, as it turns out, shoot first wasn’t great for ALEC, which lost about 400 lawmaker members and at least 40 significant corporate sponsors as a result of publicity linking ALEC to the shoot first laws and other legislation detrimental to citizens, such as ALEC’s voter suppression legislation requiring citizens to perform backflips through flaming hoops before exercising their most basic right in a democracy.

When utilities get power from oil or coal-fired generators or nuclear plants, they pay for it. But ALEC’s energy industry members want homeowners who produce renewable energy to be treated differently. They want homeowners who produce green electricity to pay the utility to take it, and then the utility would sell it.

The utility gets paid by both the energy producer and user! It’s a win-win, where the utility wins twice. For green energy producers and consumers, it’s a lose-lose.

Such legislation is the reason ALEC needs that loyalty oath – to get lawmakers to swear to serve corporations and ignore constituents.

ALEC met again last week. Maybe it adopted the loyalty oath then. Again, the public doesn’t know because ALEC excluded reporters and citizens from its work sessions. It allowed reporters only to attend speeches by Republican publicity seekers such as Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who insisted on shutting down the government for 16 days in a failed attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act and deny millions health insurance.

Cruz said he loves ALEC almost as much as he loves seeing his own face on television. Then he slandered Sen. Dick Durbin, who conducted hearings earlier this year on ALEC’s role in propagating shoot first laws.

In a warped attempt to be funny, Cruz attributed to Sen. Durbin a frightening McCarthy line. Cruz told the ALEC members: “I was just at the Capitol and I was asked to pass along an inquiry from Sen. Durbin: ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of ALEC?’”

Cruz is wrong. Americans should be asking that question because they can’t be sure their state lawmakers haven’t sworn first allegiance to ALEC and thus foresworn their duty to first serve the citizens of their states and uphold the constitution.

ALEC claims 1,810 state lawmakers hand over – or get their state taxpayers to pay for them ­­­–$100 ALEC membership dues. But that might be an exaggeration. For example, ALEC claims every single legislator in Iowa – all 150 of them, Democrats included – and every single legislator in South Dakota – all 105 of them, Democrats included – are members. This is an organization that describes its mission as advancing free markets, limited government and federalism. Those are the priorities of the Tea Party, not Democrats.

<a href="http://www.mountainx.com/article/54670/Progress-Green Alliance and on the boards of Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute. He is a member of the executive committee for IndustriALL Global Labor federation and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union. Follow @USWBlogger

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About Leo Gerard

Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers (USW), took office in 2001 after the retirement of former president George Becker.